Human Toys
interview - October 2020
by Fred Guillamaud
For 10
years, Human Toys was a French post-punk duo with Poupée Mecanik (vocals,
theremin) and Emma Amaretto (guitar, vocals, backing tracks). Emma moved to
Marseille and started Catalogue. She got replaced by Jon Von (Rip Offs, Jon and
the Vons, etc.). Poupée and Jon vowed to remake Human Toys as a punk band. The
proof is on a vinyl album, "Spin To Win," on Topsy-Turvy (Soundflat) Records
and on Bandcamp.
Click to listen : https://humantoys.bandcamp.com/album/spin-to-win
videos :
Plate in My Head (live) https://youtu.be/5QXQGeO0YXA
Secret Girl (live) https://youtu.be/tuXQicm8VcE
Don't Bury Your Dead (video) https://youtu.be/PNVEFJed-8Q
Let's Get High (video) https://youtu.be/7vJVdX_WkTc
Don't You Piss Me Off (video) https://youtu.be/vZq8I0drBUg
Centipede (video) https://youtu.be/GwUC1c4VS-s
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Fred : Jon, back in the days of the Mr. T Experience, you would introduce each song by saying "here's a song about a girl." How about in 2020?
Jon : That was fun, but I wanted to get out of the habit of writing songs about girls. We totally changed the Human Toys set and sound when I joined. We started playing our cover of Plate In My Head by the Didjits, an awesome group from Ohio in the 1990s. It's about a Vietnam vet, crazy and homeless, raving, haunted by how he killed people in 'Nam. But people call him a hero, and finally he yells "Don't wanna be a goddam hero!!!" I realized that it's a very intense, political song, but not preachy. I decided to take the challenge of writing meaningful songs.
Poupée : We wanted to have political topics but not be dogmatic. So, we focus on issues that interest and affect us. For example, sexism in society (Don't You Piss Me Off). We love making B-movie style videos, we made one for that song where I get my revenge on a bunch of pigs: amputation, castration, and more! Fuck them!!!
Jon : And sexism in rock n roll, like in our song I'm In the Band. Our friend Oihane has a blog called "I Am In the Band" https://iamintheband.blogspot.com/ that we enjoy. It chronicles the experiences of women in rock. Over and over, you see the pattern.
Poupée : It hits home, for example, when we go to sound check and the jerk engineer just wants to talk to the man in the band and not to me.
Jon : So, I put this all together but tried to make it entertaining too.
Poupée : There's nothing wrong with having something serious to say, as long as the song's not boring, like with the Avengers or X Ray Spex, or the Dead Kennedys. "Secret Girl" is about our friend who has two identities, male and female, depending on how s/he is feeling. So, it's a statement about freedom and open-mindedness.
Fred : What is your perception of the Burger Records scandal?
Poupée : It is the reflection of a much bigger problem, concerning the patriarchal society and rape culture, as denounced by feminists. Rock n roll is, unfortunately, not very different: star-males have the power, young-groupie-females are meeting those "gods" backstage to share some alcohol and/or drugs and be fucked. Most of the bands are all men. There are female festivals and so on, but are there some male festivals? There is International Women's Day, but no International Men's Day: it's not necessary because 364 days a year are Men's Day! I hope that the Burger Records story, as well as the Me Too movement, will give rise to deep changes in our society. That will also mean reinventing the way people raise children.
Fred : As a woman in rock n roll, who are your models?
Poupée : Lux and Iggy!!! Because they put on a real show. I try my best to take them as inspiration and really go wild on stage. But I keep an ironic touch. And a bit of Lydia Lunch because she terrifies men, and I love it!
Jon : One of our songs is about The Church of Lux, and I quote: "he's living down in hell / looking up at all of us / can we make him proud / or will we miss the bus?"
Fred : Why is Human Toys a feminist band?
Poupée : Because of our freedom on stage. Being sexy, feminine, powerful, not being afraid of being ugly, sweaty, just doing what the fuck we want and not what society expects. And Jon is as feminist as I am. It has nothing to do with gender.
Fred : What are some other songs about?
Jon : Let's Get High was inspired by an article that explained that since the cavemen, humans have an innate desire to get high, it's just the products that have changed. We made a video with images from our friend Kiki Picasso, a great French artist and activist fighting for the freedom to get high. Dorothy Green is a portrait of a Trumper, hypnotized by alt-right hate propaganda and scared of a black planet. She keeps a gun in her car, but the last line is, "What is Dorothy gonna do when there's no place to hide?"
Poupée : And in Don't Bury Your Dead, Trump is revealed to be a zombie and I am obliged to neutralize him. So, he shows up twice on the record (as a symbol of ignorance, male chauvinism and fascism). He is so abject. How can Americans not realize that?
Fred : And there are two covers of songs by Jon's old bands.
Poupée : That was my idea, I thought it would be funny, since we were playing some old Human Toys songs too. I wanted to turn She Said Yeah from the Rip Offs into He Said Yeah. No Money No Job is my favorite song from the Four Slicks and is so much fun to play. We're taking old songs but fooling around with them.
Fred : What's up with the Rip Offs?
Jon : We basically broke up in 1995 because it was too difficult for everyone to be in the band with Greg. But I'm glad to say that 20 years was enough for us to all mature a bit and for a few years we've been having lots of fun at reunion shows and everyone gets along fine.
Fred : So where are Human Toys' bass player and drummer?
Poupée : The old Human Toys was me singing and playing theremin, and Emma on guitar. Emma also recorded backing tracks that were basically synth bass and synthetic drum sounds. We played these backing tracks through the PA during our live shows. This made it so easy to tour because we were just two people, a guitar and a theremin.
Jon : Having a duo is great, finally I'm really happy with this configuration! But Emma's tracks had a synth-punk sound and I wanted to sound like we have a real punk rock rhythm section, not machines and their esthetic. I learned MIDI and beat my head against the wall for a while figuring out how to make it sound real. Then during the lockdown in March and April, we recorded the LP for zero dollars in our living room. Including the guitar tracks, which surely annoyed the neighbors a little.
Poupée : We even thought of changing the name because of all the changes in the group, but I guess we got too lazy... I kinda liked Jon and the Lips (a reference to Jon and the Vons).
Jon : My favorite new name was the Intestines. I was going to be Large Intestine and she was Small Intestine. The album title would have been More Shit from the Intestines.
Poupée : Too late for regrets!
Thanks to Fred for the interview and to the photographers !
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